• A GUIDE TO FAMILY DYNAMICS •
Welcome to DOLIF Psychology
The Distribution Of Love In Families
The acronym DOLIF stands for the Distribution Of Love In Families. It refers to the way that parents distribute the precious, but well hidden, commodity of LOVE among their children in the families they create.
DOLIF theory upstages current Cognitive Behavioral Theory or CBT.
After 45 years of observation, independent research personal experience, and watching families through four generations of evolution consisting of 1. my mother and father (a four-sibling and a nine-sibling family), 2. my Family of Origin (three siblings), 3. my Family of Procreation (two siblings) and 4. their families, my grandchildren (three siblings and two siblings), this author
VERA RABIE, Doctor of Psychology
discovered that CBT is incorrect. Not only is it obsolete, having been adopted since the early 1900’s, but many years after its application to animals, CBT was wrongfully applied to humans, especially children. At present the author contends that CBT is distinctly harmful and should be put aside. It is an outrageous mistake of enormous proportions that treats children the way we might treat animals, making no provision for the division between members of the animal kingdom and the superior intelligence of homo sapiens, but places them all in one category!
Rather Vera Rabie, Doctor of Psychology, discovered that in humans, there is a separate domain of functioning. This she designates as the Emotional domain or
Mind of a Child.
We all possess a Mind of a Child that governs our thinking and behavior because we were all once children. And by following child-centered thinking over half a century Vera Rabie, D.Psy. found that since child thinking and behavior is governed by Emotions rather than Intelligence, in order to raise mentally healthy children, we need to learn to accommodate the Mind of a Child. She uncovered an unspoken economy of LOVE that occurs spontaneously between parents and children in every family and is the center of a child’s world, but makes no sense to adults. This is how it works.
It seems that without talking about it but living within their Emotional realm, every child instinctively competes for MORE PARENTAL LOVE than their next born sibling. As adults, we see this every day but dismiss it as frivolity and call it normal Sibling Rivalry. But it is paramount for us to understand that children are immersed in this world of Emotional conflict, or conflict with their sibling over parental LOVE at all times!
But it seems that, in response to their children’s desperate competition for LOVE and attention, without realizing it, parents end up directing MORE LOVE or FAVOR toward some children than others.
Specifically, parents show FAVOR toward the sibling who displays pleasing, positive social behavior, but show comparative DISFAVOR toward the sibling who displays less pleasing or negative behavior.
DOLIF theory proposes that the reason for both positive and negative behavior in children is PARENTAL LOVE, or LACK OF PARENTAL LOVE, COMPARED WITH A SIBLING! Vera Rabie, D.Psy. discovered that all children behave the way they do, whether positive or negative, to gain our LOVE!
So, how should parents DISTRIBUTE their LOVE to achieve the best results in their children’s social and behavioral adjustment?
In order to improve their child’s negative behavior, DOLF recommends that parents reverse the process of Favoritism and direct MORE LOVE toward their LESS well-behaved child.
When parents do change their attitude toward their
negatively-behaved child and direct MORE LOVE toward them, the difficult child’s behavior improves swiftly and dramatically.
It provides ongoing proof that DOLIF theory is accurate and that FAVORITISM or LOVE from parents is indeed the unspoken source of motivation when children behave badly. It also shows that changing the parents’ attitudes was the critical factor influencing their child’s negative behavior.
Dr. Rabie’s findings also indicate that LACK OF PARENTAL LOVE or Disfavor in comparison with a next-born sibling is the main cause of Emotional problems throughout life such as mental illness, substance abuse, money-hunger, sociopathy, criminal behavior and more.
YOU LOVE MY BROTHER/SISTER MORE THAN ME!
*To read more, see the four phases of DOLIF THEORY.
*Also refer to the Blogs for real-life case studies of treatment using the DOLIF method.
ABOUT VERA RABIE, DOCTOR OF PSYCHOLOGY
I obtained my BA at McGill University, and Doctor of Psychology from the University of Montreal. I later worked in long and short term mental health settings, adult corrections, youth corrections, education, employee assistance and private practice.
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